Sustainability issues occupy central stage in the field of architecture. Considering the increased awareness of environmental stakes and increased building performance, these aspects will become more and more important in research and practical work related to architecture and construction engineering.
To address this demand, architectural and civil and environmental engineering studies are characterized by the increased integration of sustainability issues. This development is already observed in the existing EPFL course offering, at bachelor, master and doctoral levels. Thus, the Minor aims at structuring this existing offer in a targeted orientation for the students, in order to make it transparent and explicit, and to guide them towards a richer and more coherent knowledge.
The central thread of this orientation is based on a in-depth approach of sustainable architecture and construction principles, which rely on the simultaneous integration of various parameters: efficient use of non-renewable resources, optimal user comfort mainly through passive means, bioclimatic specificities and, more generally, optimization of environmental, sociocultural and economic criteria.
The objectives are also to strengthen exchanges and synergies between the three institutes of ENAC with a list of interdisciplinary classes selected from the existing course offering. Moreover, the Minor creates a new orientation to prepare second cycle students more explicitly for a doctoral work within the Doctoral Program Architecture and Sciences of the City (EDAR).
The IDEAS Minor is fully in line with the restructuration process of the different research and teaching fields of the SAR, as well as with the interdisciplinary exchange possibilities within ENAC.